Sunday, September 27, 2009

Barack Obama Must See Michael Moore's New Movie (and So Must You)!

Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod.

Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the auto-industry. Fahrenheit 9/11 was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the house of cards the Bush administration used to lead us to war in Iraq. Sicko was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the US health care system. And now, with his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, he is riding the wave of the collapse of trust in our country's financial system.

The film, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and all across the country on October 2nd, is a withering indictment of the current economic order, covering everything from Wall Street's casino mentality to for-profit prisons, from Goldman Sachs' sway in Washington to the poverty-level pay of many airline pilots, from the tidal wave of foreclosures to the tragic consequences of runaway greed.

Watching the film, I felt like Michael had climbed inside my head, made a list of all the things that have been obsessing me for the last 12 months, and brought them horrifyingly to life. It's one thing to know these things are happening; it's another to see them happening in front of your eyes.

Right from the beginning -- after a funny set-up juxtaposing End of Empire Rome and Modern America -- Michael goes directly to the beating heart of the economic crisis, showing a hard-working, middle class family being evicted from their home. The knot in your stomach starts to tighten -- and the outrage starts to build. Watch for yourself in this exclusive clip:

And so it goes throughout the film, with Moore successfully walking a cinematic tightrope, alternating between a punch-to-the-solar-plexus critique of the status quo, heart-wrenching portraits of the suffering caused by the economic crisis, and laugh-out-loud social satire.

The film also turns the spotlight on some underreported gems: an internal Citibank report happily declaring America a "plutonomy," with the top 1 percent of the population controlling more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent; an expose of "dead peasant" insurance policies that have companies cashing in on the untimely deaths of their employees; and amazing footage of FDR, found buried in a film archive and not seen in decades, calling for a Second Bill of Rights that would guarantee all Americans a useful job, a decent home, adequate health care, and a good education.

And Moore underlines the irony of Larry Summers being put in charge of fixing the crisis he helped create. A little like asking Kanye West to plan a Taylor Swift tribute.

While taking no prisoners, and directing equal doses of ire at Republicans and Democrats alike, the film also features a number of heroes, including bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren; Wayne County, Michigan Sheriff Warren Evans, who announced in February: "I cannot in clear conscience allow one more family to be put out of their home until I am satisfied they have been afforded every option they are entitled to under the law to avoid foreclosure"; and Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who took to the House floor and offered a radical solution to the foreclosure crisis: "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave."

In the film, Michael describes capitalism as evil. I disagree. I don't think capitalism is evil. I think what we have right now is not capitalism.

In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn't get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It's socialized losses and privatized gains.

Which is why -- although you can bet many will try -- Capitalism: A Love Story can't be dismissed as a left-wing tirade. Its condemnation of the status quo is too grounded in real stories and real suffering, its targets too evenly spread across the political spectrum. Indeed, Jay Leno, America's designated Everyman, was so moved by the film he insisted that Moore appear on the second night of his new show, and told his audience that the film was "completely nonpartisan... I was stunned by it, and I think it is the most fair film" Moore has done.

After a preview screening last week (at which I did a Q&A session with Michael), he came over to my home for a late night bite. Over lasagna, he told me about an incident that occurred while he was filming that exemplifies how the economic crisis cannot be looked at through a left vs right prism.

It happened while he and his crew were shooting the climax of the movie, where Michael decides to mark Wall Street as a crime scene, putting up yellow police tape around some of the financial district's towers of power.

While unfurling the tape in front of a "too big to fail" bank, he became aware of a group of New York's finest approaching him. Moore has a long history of dealing with policemen and security guards trying to shut him down, but in this case he knew he was, however temporarily, defacing private property. And his shooting schedule didn't leave room for a detour to the local jail. So, as the lead officer came closer, Moore tried to deflect him, saying: "Just doing a little comedy here, officer. I'll be gone in a minute, and will clean up before I go."

The officer looked at him for a moment, then leaned in: "Take all the time you need." He nodded to the bank and said, "These guys wiped out a lot of our Police Pension Funds." The officer turned and slowly headed back to his squad car. Moore wanted to put the moment in his film, but realized it could cost the cop his job, and decided to leave it out. "When they've lost the police," he told me, "you know they're in trouble."

There is a real sense of urgency to Capitalism: A Love Story. I asked Michael what impact he hoped the film would have. He chuckled and said that, in some way, he had made the movie for "an audience of one. President Obama. I hope he sees it and remembers who put him in the White House... and it wasn't Goldman Sachs."

At the Q&A I did with Michael -- and, indeed, wherever he goes -- people who see the film are asking: What should I do to make a difference?

There are obviously many things people can do. At HuffPost, we are asking everyone to bear witness by putting flesh and blood on the tragic human cost of the greed and corruption that have brought us to where we are.

Tell us your story -- or the stories about people you know whose home has been foreclosed, whose job has disappeared, whose kids can't afford to go to college, whose credit card interest rate has been jacked up to 30 percent, etc, etc, etc. And tell us the positive stories too: the heroes -- judges, lawyers, volunteers -- who are helping people stay in their homes, the neighbors who are coming together to alleviate the pain and make their community a better place to live in. You can tell these stories in words, pictures, or videos. We'll collect them on a special Bearing Witness 2.0 section.

When people are given the facts and shown the reality of what is happening, they will almost always do the right thing. Help us keep showing that reality.

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod. Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse...
Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod. Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse...

Barack Obama Must See Michael Moore's New Movie (and So Must You)!

Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod.

Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the auto-industry. Fahrenheit 9/11 was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the house of cards the Bush administration used to lead us to war in Iraq. Sicko was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the US health care system. And now, with his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, he is riding the wave of the collapse of trust in our country's financial system.

The film, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and all across the country on October 2nd, is a withering indictment of the current economic order, covering everything from Wall Street's casino mentality to for-profit prisons, from Goldman Sachs' sway in Washington to the poverty-level pay of many airline pilots, from the tidal wave of foreclosures to the tragic consequences of runaway greed.

Watching the film, I felt like Michael had climbed inside my head, made a list of all the things that have been obsessing me for the last 12 months, and brought them horrifyingly to life. It's one thing to know these things are happening; it's another to see them happening in front of your eyes.

Right from the beginning -- after a funny set-up juxtaposing End of Empire Rome and Modern America -- Michael goes directly to the beating heart of the economic crisis, showing a hard-working, middle class family being evicted from their home. The knot in your stomach starts to tighten -- and the outrage starts to build. Watch for yourself in this exclusive clip:

And so it goes throughout the film, with Moore successfully walking a cinematic tightrope, alternating between a punch-to-the-solar-plexus critique of the status quo, heart-wrenching portraits of the suffering caused by the economic crisis, and laugh-out-loud social satire.

The film also turns the spotlight on some underreported gems: an internal Citibank report happily declaring America a "plutonomy," with the top 1 percent of the population controlling more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent; an expose of "dead peasant" insurance policies that have companies cashing in on the untimely deaths of their employees; and amazing footage of FDR, found buried in a film archive and not seen in decades, calling for a Second Bill of Rights that would guarantee all Americans a useful job, a decent home, adequate health care, and a good education.

And Moore underlines the irony of Larry Summers being put in charge of fixing the crisis he helped create. A little like asking Kanye West to plan a Taylor Swift tribute.

While taking no prisoners, and directing equal doses of ire at Republicans and Democrats alike, the film also features a number of heroes, including bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren; Wayne County, Michigan Sheriff Warren Evans, who announced in February: "I cannot in clear conscience allow one more family to be put out of their home until I am satisfied they have been afforded every option they are entitled to under the law to avoid foreclosure"; and Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who took to the House floor and offered a radical solution to the foreclosure crisis: "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave."

In the film, Michael describes capitalism as evil. I disagree. I don't think capitalism is evil. I think what we have right now is not capitalism.

In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn't get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It's socialized losses and privatized gains.

Which is why -- although you can bet many will try -- Capitalism: A Love Story can't be dismissed as a left-wing tirade. Its condemnation of the status quo is too grounded in real stories and real suffering, its targets too evenly spread across the political spectrum. Indeed, Jay Leno, America's designated Everyman, was so moved by the film he insisted that Moore appear on the second night of his new show, and told his audience that the film was "completely nonpartisan... I was stunned by it, and I think it is the most fair film" Moore has done.

After a preview screening last week (at which I did a Q&A session with Michael), he came over to my home for a late night bite. Over lasagna, he told me about an incident that occurred while he was filming that exemplifies how the economic crisis cannot be looked at through a left vs right prism.

It happened while he and his crew were shooting the climax of the movie, where Michael decides to mark Wall Street as a crime scene, putting up yellow police tape around some of the financial district's towers of power.

While unfurling the tape in front of a "too big to fail" bank, he became aware of a group of New York's finest approaching him. Moore has a long history of dealing with policemen and security guards trying to shut him down, but in this case he knew he was, however temporarily, defacing private property. And his shooting schedule didn't leave room for a detour to the local jail. So, as the lead officer came closer, Moore tried to deflect him, saying: "Just doing a little comedy here, officer. I'll be gone in a minute, and will clean up before I go."

The officer looked at him for a moment, then leaned in: "Take all the time you need." He nodded to the bank and said, "These guys wiped out a lot of our Police Pension Funds." The officer turned and slowly headed back to his squad car. Moore wanted to put the moment in his film, but realized it could cost the cop his job, and decided to leave it out. "When they've lost the police," he told me, "you know they're in trouble."

There is a real sense of urgency to Capitalism: A Love Story. I asked Michael what impact he hoped the film would have. He chuckled and said that, in some way, he had made the movie for "an audience of one. President Obama. I hope he sees it and remembers who put him in the White House... and it wasn't Goldman Sachs."

At the Q&A I did with Michael -- and, indeed, wherever he goes -- people who see the film are asking: What should I do to make a difference?

There are obviously many things people can do. At HuffPost, we are asking everyone to bear witness by putting flesh and blood on the tragic human cost of the greed and corruption that have brought us to where we are.

Tell us your story -- or the stories about people you know whose home has been foreclosed, whose job has disappeared, whose kids can't afford to go to college, whose credit card interest rate has been jacked up to 30 percent, etc, etc, etc. And tell us the positive stories too: the heroes -- judges, lawyers, volunteers -- who are helping people stay in their homes, the neighbors who are coming together to alleviate the pain and make their community a better place to live in. You can tell these stories in words, pictures, or videos. We'll collect them on a special Bearing Witness 2.0 section.

When people are given the facts and shown the reality of what is happening, they will almost always do the right thing. Help us keep showing that reality.

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod. Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse...
Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod. Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse...

Barack Obama Must See Michael Moore's New Movie (and So Must You)!

Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod.

Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the auto-industry. Fahrenheit 9/11 was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the house of cards the Bush administration used to lead us to war in Iraq. Sicko was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the US health care system. And now, with his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, he is riding the wave of the collapse of trust in our country's financial system.

The film, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and all across the country on October 2nd, is a withering indictment of the current economic order, covering everything from Wall Street's casino mentality to for-profit prisons, from Goldman Sachs' sway in Washington to the poverty-level pay of many airline pilots, from the tidal wave of foreclosures to the tragic consequences of runaway greed.

Watching the film, I felt like Michael had climbed inside my head, made a list of all the things that have been obsessing me for the last 12 months, and brought them horrifyingly to life. It's one thing to know these things are happening; it's another to see them happening in front of your eyes.

Right from the beginning -- after a funny set-up juxtaposing End of Empire Rome and Modern America -- Michael goes directly to the beating heart of the economic crisis, showing a hard-working, middle class family being evicted from their home. The knot in your stomach starts to tighten -- and the outrage starts to build. Watch for yourself in this exclusive clip:

And so it goes throughout the film, with Moore successfully walking a cinematic tightrope, alternating between a punch-to-the-solar-plexus critique of the status quo, heart-wrenching portraits of the suffering caused by the economic crisis, and laugh-out-loud social satire.

The film also turns the spotlight on some underreported gems: an internal Citibank report happily declaring America a "plutonomy," with the top 1 percent of the population controlling more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent; an expose of "dead peasant" insurance policies that have companies cashing in on the untimely deaths of their employees; and amazing footage of FDR, found buried in a film archive and not seen in decades, calling for a Second Bill of Rights that would guarantee all Americans a useful job, a decent home, adequate health care, and a good education.

And Moore underlines the irony of Larry Summers being put in charge of fixing the crisis he helped create. A little like asking Kanye West to plan a Taylor Swift tribute.

While taking no prisoners, and directing equal doses of ire at Republicans and Democrats alike, the film also features a number of heroes, including bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren; Wayne County, Michigan Sheriff Warren Evans, who announced in February: "I cannot in clear conscience allow one more family to be put out of their home until I am satisfied they have been afforded every option they are entitled to under the law to avoid foreclosure"; and Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who took to the House floor and offered a radical solution to the foreclosure crisis: "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave."

In the film, Michael describes capitalism as evil. I disagree. I don't think capitalism is evil. I think what we have right now is not capitalism.

In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn't get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It's socialized losses and privatized gains.

Which is why -- although you can bet many will try -- Capitalism: A Love Story can't be dismissed as a left-wing tirade. Its condemnation of the status quo is too grounded in real stories and real suffering, its targets too evenly spread across the political spectrum. Indeed, Jay Leno, America's designated Everyman, was so moved by the film he insisted that Moore appear on the second night of his new show, and told his audience that the film was "completely nonpartisan... I was stunned by it, and I think it is the most fair film" Moore has done.

After a preview screening last week (at which I did a Q&A session with Michael), he came over to my home for a late night bite. Over lasagna, he told me about an incident that occurred while he was filming that exemplifies how the economic crisis cannot be looked at through a left vs right prism.

It happened while he and his crew were shooting the climax of the movie, where Michael decides to mark Wall Street as a crime scene, putting up yellow police tape around some of the financial district's towers of power.

While unfurling the tape in front of a "too big to fail" bank, he became aware of a group of New York's finest approaching him. Moore has a long history of dealing with policemen and security guards trying to shut him down, but in this case he knew he was, however temporarily, defacing private property. And his shooting schedule didn't leave room for a detour to the local jail. So, as the lead officer came closer, Moore tried to deflect him, saying: "Just doing a little comedy here, officer. I'll be gone in a minute, and will clean up before I go."

The officer looked at him for a moment, then leaned in: "Take all the time you need." He nodded to the bank and said, "These guys wiped out a lot of our Police Pension Funds." The officer turned and slowly headed back to his squad car. Moore wanted to put the moment in his film, but realized it could cost the cop his job, and decided to leave it out. "When they've lost the police," he told me, "you know they're in trouble."

There is a real sense of urgency to Capitalism: A Love Story. I asked Michael what impact he hoped the film would have. He chuckled and said that, in some way, he had made the movie for "an audience of one. President Obama. I hope he sees it and remembers who put him in the White House... and it wasn't Goldman Sachs."

At the Q&A I did with Michael -- and, indeed, wherever he goes -- people who see the film are asking: What should I do to make a difference?

There are obviously many things people can do. At HuffPost, we are asking everyone to bear witness by putting flesh and blood on the tragic human cost of the greed and corruption that have brought us to where we are.

Tell us your story -- or the stories about people you know whose home has been foreclosed, whose job has disappeared, whose kids can't afford to go to college, whose credit card interest rate has been jacked up to 30 percent, etc, etc, etc. And tell us the positive stories too: the heroes -- judges, lawyers, volunteers -- who are helping people stay in their homes, the neighbors who are coming together to alleviate the pain and make their community a better place to live in. You can tell these stories in words, pictures, or videos. We'll collect them on a special Bearing Witness 2.0 section.

When people are given the facts and shown the reality of what is happening, they will almost always do the right thing. Help us keep showing that reality.

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod. Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse...
Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod. Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse...

Veterans groups AWOL from Mayor Bloomberg's list of endorsements

Adam Lisberg

Sunday, September 27th 2009, 4:00 AM

Mayor Bloomberg has some 400 endorsements from groups, but none of them represent veterans.
Rosier/News
Mayor Bloomberg has some 400 endorsements from groups, but none of them represent veterans.

Mayor Bloomberg appears to have a veteran problem.

As of last week, his campaign counted more than 400 endorsements - but just one of them was from a veterans group. And that group doesn't even exist.

The "Panamanian and Ethnic American Veterans Political Action Committee," which has its own page on Bloomberg's Web site, has never filed any paperwork, made any donations or endorsed a candidate - besides Bloomberg.

Rev. Guillermo Martino, a Panamanian-American Vietnam veteran who heads the Tabernacle of God's Glory in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said the 125-member group wants to build a community center for its fellow Panamanian immigrants.

"At the beginning, we weren't doing anything politically," Martino said last week. "This year, they came over and asked us to give them our support."

He said a Bloomberg campaign worker told them the mayor could help them get a building for their center - but did not offer any specifics, or offer it as a quid pro quo.

"There were promises that we felt in our heart," Martino said. "He's going to help us to obtain the building. We believe it, and we will stand on that."

So does he think Bloomberg has helped veterans?

"I have not seen it, no. I'm looking forward that he will start," Martino said. "We are looking forward to him learning from whatever mistakes he made in the past."

Funny thing is, some veterans active in real organizations say the same thing - that Bloomberg hasn't reached out to soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, hasn't done enough to help homeless or addicted vets, and hasn't gone out of his way to help veterans get jobs and housing.

"We haven't had much in the way of proactive help from the mayor," said Edward Daniels, who chairs a group called the Incarcerated Veterans Consortium.

He was invited to a "Veterans for Bloomberg" meeting at the campaign's headquarters earlier this month, but after hearing a presentation about Bloomberg's record, he said he walked out unimpressed.

Critics say the Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs, which Bloomberg elevated to a commissioner-level department two years ago, rarely starts new initiatives and tends to piggyback on the work of other groups.

And Bloomberg has been to only one servicemember's funeral in more than three years.

Some veterans back him: Stephen Kaufman, an Air Force vet who attended the "Veterans for Bloomberg" meeting, said he lent his support after hearing his plans for more outreach and counseling in a third term.

"He's very subtle, but he's getting it done," said another attendee, Joe Graham, president of the Manhattan branch of the Vietnam Veterans of America. "I think he's terrific for vets."

As Bloomberg campaigns for a third term, he is actively soliciting votes with groups like "Asians for Bloomberg" and "Women for Bloomberg" and "Urban Young Professionals for Bloomberg." But you can scour his Web site and never find mention of an organized "Veterans for Bloomberg" - just a phantom group of Panamanians.

alisberg@nydailynews.com

Saturday, September 26, 2009

D'OH!!!!

From the NY Post:

Monserrate's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, had said during opening arguments in Queens Supreme Court that Giraldo spoke "Spanglish" -- a mix of English and Spanish -- and that she had been misunderstood by the hospital staff.

But [Dr.] Korte said her father was from Panama and mother hailed from Puerto Rico, and as a result grew up speaking Spanish at home with her grandparents. She also said she studied in Spain.

Korte said she understood Giraldo, who is originally from Ecuador, and that the conversation was in both Spanish and English.

Korte said Giraldo reenacted the fight, saying Monserrate was "thrusting the glass forward -- angrily" when he attacked her.

"She was upset ... She was sobbing," said Korte of Giraldo.

Korte said Giraldo told her, "No! No! You can't call the police."

Bloomberg tells pollster to lie

From the NY Post:

POLL FAULT! 'INDY' CALLER PULLS A FAST ONE

WHEN I answered the phone the other day, a man identified himself as Carl or somebody and said he was calling from an "independent research" organization.

If the New York City mayoral race were held today, he asked, would I vote for Michael Bloomberg or Bill Thompson?

I said, truthfully, that I hadn't decided, which prompted the slickest segue from my new friend.

In a nanosecond, he was speed-reading a script that made Bloomberg sound like a candidate for sainthood instead of a third term.

Hey, I interrupted loudly. You said you were from an independent organization. You lied. You're working for Bloomberg.

I promised he could read all about his dirty trick in The Post.

Hold on for my supervisor, he said, and soon I was talking to a man with a flat Midwestern accent who identified himself as Cody Maynard.

I told him that falsely identifying his company as independent was a political no-no and asked the name of the firm and where he's located.

"For security reasons, I can't say," he responded.

When I pressed, he admitted, "That's what I'm told to say. I can't give out any information."

His supervisor, he swore, would call me and explain everything. I'm waiting.


Photo from Daily News

Friday, September 25, 2009

Yassky Pulled Into Broadway Triangle Vortex

Last Updated: 1:50 PM, September 25, 2009

With less than one week before a runoff election between comptroller candidates David Yassky and John Liu, a group of Williamsburg residents demonstrated in front of Councilmember Yassky’s downtown Brooklyn district office (114 Court Street) over his position on the city’s plan to rezone 31 acres in South Williamsburg.

“He sold us out! He’ll sell you out!” chanted about 12 constituents, while they walked in a protest circle on the corner of Court and State streets on Sept. 24.

The constituents were members of the Broadway Triangle Community Coalition, an umbrella group of 40 Brooklyn community organizations opposed to the city’s plan to rezone a 31-acre site in South Williamsburg for residential use. Yassky, whose district includes the proposed site, known as the Broadway Triangle, has publicly stated his support for the rezoning plan, which will provide 1,895 units of affordable housing.

Under the proposed plan, two North Brooklyn organizations, the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and the United Jewish Organizations, are slated to develop housing on the site following a charette with the city’s housing Department.

“If you can’t even stand up for your local community residents, what makes you think you can stand up for the entire city?” said Rob Solano, executive director of Churches United for Fair Housing. “If you can’t even deal with the Broadway Triangle controversy in your local district, how can you deal with this issue as a whole?”

A spokesperson for Yassky, Danny Kanner, dismissed the criticism while saying that the councilmember “fully respects the right of the demonstrators to voice their disapproval.”

“David’s support for the rezoning is based on the hundreds of units of affordable housing, open space, and jobs it will create for the Greenpoint-Williamsburg community,” said Kanner.

The demonstration marks a change in strategy for community leaders who oppose the Broadway Triangle, as the debate over the rezoning moves from the City Planning Commission to the City Council. BTCC members are lobbying councilmembers on the Council’s Land Use committee, including Queens Councilmembers Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside), Melinda Katz (D-Forest Hills), John Liu (D-Flushing), and Brooklyn Councilmember Al Vann (D-Bedford-Stuyvesant). Yassky has already submitted testimony to the City Planning Commission in favor of the plan and has not indicated that he would change his position on the issue.

“The rezoning of the Broadway Triangle is a long overdue step toward the creation of much-needed affordable housing and a revitalized central business district in this largely underdeveloped section of Williamsburg,” said Yassky following Community Board 1’s Land Use Committee approved the plan.

BTCC leader Juan Ramos said he was “deeply disturbed” that Yassky did not meet with coalition members to explain his position on the plan.

“We are entitled to an explanation of how Yassky can justify a process that led to a plan that limits affordable housing to half of what it could be, provides no open space, and destroys the existing businesses on the site,” Ramos said.

Staff from Yassky’s district office confirmed, however, that the councilmember reached out to coalition leader Rob Solano to speak with him over the phone about the Broadway Triangle rezoning, but Solano demurred.

“He would only talk with me. I said I could not morally represent the entire coalition by myself,” Solano said.

The City Planning Commission is expected to vote on the rezoning on October 7, after the vote was rescheduled from September 23. The change in date will not delay when the City Council will take up discussion of the vote at a Land Use Committee hearing in late October or early November.

Concurrently, the BTCC filed a lawsuit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city’s Housing Department regarding the process by which the rezoning took place. A court hearing for the suit was moved from October 9 to October 19.

City Council Representative Yassky's Zigzag Path to the Runoff

A credibility gap for Comptroller wannabes

By Tom Robbins

Tuesday, September 22nd 2009 at 3:28pm

Dick Dadey remembers walking in his Brooklyn Heights neighborhood in September 2008, when he bumped into his neighbor and City Council representative, David Yassky. Dadey, who heads the city's oldest good-government group, Citizens Union, brought up the big topic of the day: the growing rumor that Mayor Bloomberg was poised to make a brazen bid to dump the city's term-limits law in order to win a third term.

"He didn't have any hesitation," said Dadey. "He indicated to me he would not support overturning the term-limits law without a voter referendum."

Dadey checked in with Yassky again during a formal visit to City Hall once Bloomberg openly called for the change. "I went up to him and said, 'David, you're going to oppose this, right?' And he said, 'Of course I am.' He said it in no uncertain terms. So I marked him down as a 'Yes' for our side."

A few days later, Dadey heard that Yassky was saying something different. "I called him, and he said that he had not yet really made up his mind. I was in disbelief. He said he had not yet come to a final position on the issue and asked that I no longer list him as a 'Yes,' but as 'Undecided.' I told him, 'Well, from my point of view, you have changed your mind because you told me on two separate occasions that you were going to oppose this.' He said, 'Well, it's complicated because I am opposed to term limits generally, but I would not like to see this go through.' "

The call lasted some 15 fairly heated minutes, says Dadey. "I felt he was backing away from a commitment he had made to me earlier. He was all over the map."

Yassky later offered his own last-minute compromise, calling for a new referendum on the issue. "It was a charade," says Dadey. "He was trying to have it both ways." After Yassky's bill failed on the Council floor, the roll call was held on the mayor's bill. It passed 29-22, with Yassky voting in favor.

Asked about the exchange last week, Yassky said he had no memory of the two earlier conversations with Dadey. "I talked about term limits with 400 people, maybe more," he said. But he recalled the last one.

"I remember that we had a tense phone call. I don't remember the words of it. I do remember Dick calling me and being angry about it."

Was Dadey right to be angry?

"Honestly, no," said the Councilman. He said his goal all along had been to have the issue resolved by referendum. "From the outset, I knew that a 12-year policy was better. But I was very troubled by the way the mayor was doing it. I was looking for a way to figure that out."

Mike Bloomberg may well escape paying the ultimate political price for manipulating a self-serving City Council into passing a law that gave itself and the mayor an extra term—despite two previous referendum votes against it. New Yorkers are still angry about that, but not angry enough to vote out a sitting mayor—that is, until Bill Thompson comes up with solid arguments to convince them otherwise.

But the two remaining candidates for city comptroller—Yassky and Queens Councilman John Liu—are little known to most voters. And how they performed under fire during that critical moment could be a deciding factor in the September 29 runoff.

Liu was a resolute opponent of the change, although clearly not a leader in the fight against it, an honor that goes to Bill De Blasio and Tish James. Yassky? As Dadey suggests, he was on all sides of the issue, until he wasn't.

The Councilman said last week that he has no regrets on his decision. He insisted that he would be the tougher of the two candidates in holding the mayor accountable and ferreting out mismanagement in Bloomberg's favorite fiefdoms, including the education and economic development agencies. Given his declared passion for open government and accountability, it would be nice to think so. But if his term limits behavior is the yardstick, comptroller Yassky seems more likely to be extremely proficient—but absent without leave on the toughest issues.

Which is too bad, because David Yassky is almost tailor-made to be the city's fiscal watchdog: His pedigree is Princeton, Yale Law, and Charles Schumer, for whom he helped shape bills on gun control and law enforcement funding. He spent time as a corporate lawyer and more time analyzing municipal finances at the city's budget office. His Council reputation is bright and creative, and he even has achievements to show for it: affordable housing on the Brooklyn waterfront, the rescue of Red Hook's working piers, clean-fuel cabs on city streets.

But the term limits episode is mirrored by his confusing, zigzag path toward higher office. A few years ago, Yassky was heroically backing a judge who had angered Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez. Now, he's Lopez's candidate. There's nothing wrong with seeking the backing of the powerful county leader, but you're not supposed to drop directly into his pocket. This summer, Yassky told a group fighting to win more low-income housing in an undeveloped corner of Williamsburg and Bushwick that he didn't have time to sit down for a meeting. Then he told the Times that he favored Lopez's scheme for the site—which steers all development to the leader's own allies.

During last year's tempest over the Council's slush-fund scandal, it emerged that Yassky had steered $55,000 to a youth group called Neighborhood Assistance Corporation created by former Brooklyn Councilman Steve DiBrienza. Based in DiBrienza's old district office, the group was largely inert, according to local reports, aside from paying salaries to DiBrienza and a pair of former aides, one of whom also worked on Yassky's Council campaigns. Yassky began funding the group in 2005, just as he was preparing a risky run for Congress in a largely black district where he wasn't even a resident.

Yassky took a lot of flak for his strategy: He moved his family a few blocks to become eligible and ran as an effective reformer who just happened to be the lone white candidate facing several black opponents. The hope—which didn't pan out—was that white votes in brownstone Brooklyn would put him over the top. DiBrienza, who represented the same neighborhoods for years, at one point had had the same idea. Instead, he endorsed Yassky.

Yassky said last week that he awarded the funds at DiBrienza's request without personally inspecting the group. "I've always said it is bad practice to have individual Council members designate funds to nonprofits," he said. "We don't have the resources to investigate."

The congressional race had nothing to do with it, he said. "I asked Steve if he was looking at this. He said no."

Yassky isn't the only panderer. Liu has the backing of the equally patronage-hungry Queens County Democratic organization, and he raised his own integrity issues when he kept insisting he was a child sweatshop worker even after his mother said it didn't happen. He has also boasted that he exposed the MTA's secret two sets of books, a laughable claim since it was the now-unmentionable state comptroller Alan Hevesi, along with Thompson, who made that 2003 finding.

The run-off is likely to set another low turnout record. This gives Liu a clear edge: In the streets, his solid union support trumps Yassky's New York Times certification. But both enter the last lap of the race well behind the curve, credibility-wise.

trobbins@villagevoice.com



Thursday, September 24, 2009

"Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics,"

By FRED SIEGEL

New York City, hard hit by the collapse of some of Wall Street's most venerable firms, has a mayoral election scheduled for Nov. 3. With the city's fiscal woes certain to deepen in the next few years, there would seem to be a great deal to debate in advance of the vote. But neither the incumbent, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, nor his challenger, Comptroller William Thompson, has had much to say about the tsunami of expenditures—for pensions, programs, salaries and debt—that is poised to break over Gotham. In "Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics," veteran New York Times journalist Joyce Purnick doesn't have much to say about it either.

And little wonder. Ms. Purnick, who had extensive access to the mayor and his staff, thinks that Mr. Bloomberg—a "benign plutocrat"—has been "one of the most effective mayors in the city's history." Her book is mostly an admiring portrait of the man and his mayoralty.

Ms. Purnick met the future mayor, she tells us, in the late 1990s, when Mr. Bloomberg was hosting a dinner party at his Manhattan townhouse. She remembers seeing network news anchors Dan Rather and Peter Jennings at the gathering, but Mr. Bloomberg "barely made an impression." Soon enough, though, she recognized that this self-made billionaire, who had amassed his fortune by providing information services to the financial industry, "is by nature a problem solver."

View Full Image
book0924
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Mike Bloomberg

By Joyce Purnick
PublicAffairs, 252 pages, $26.95

Ms. Purnick sees Mr. Bloomberg as he would like to see himself. He turned to public life, she says, quoting him approvingly, because he "wanted to make a difference." She describes him as relentlessly pragmatic, someone who exercises a "cold-eyed discipline over his frailties." At his core, she claims, Mr. Bloomberg is not the ambitious office seeker who, for instance, hoped to buy his way onto the 2008 presidential ticket but rather a consummate manager who rises above the petty concerns of conventional politics. He decides matters, she says, "on the merits, yielding little to the customary political lobbyists, interest groups, and . . . campaign contributors, since there was only one—Bloomberg himself."

When Ms. Purnick criticizes the mayor, it is generally because she perceives that he has failed his own better nature. Mr. Bloomberg's recent coup de main—overthrowing the term-limits laws that he had once supported so that he can run for a third term—is for Ms. Purnick merely an aberration, a "detour to the dark side" that shows the mayor acting, this once, like a "selfish pol." She gives only cursory coverage of the controversies of Mr. Bloomberg's tenure, such as the record property-tax increase during his first term and the failed campaign to bring the Olympics to New York.

It's only near the end of "Mike Bloomberg" that Ms. Purnick briefly focuses on the issue that his mayoralty is likely to be judged by: his second-term fiscal stewardship. Mr. Bloomberg, she says, "followed the pattern established by other mayors." Concerned with his re-election prospects, "he routinely granted all municipal union increases with no strings attached," hoping to ensure "labor peace." Astute reporter that she is, Ms. Purnick thus undercuts her own thesis about Mr. Bloomberg's ability to behave as a consummate manager, not a garden-variety politician, though she doesn't seem to notice the contradiction.

It is certainly true that Mr. Bloomberg hasn't used his political power to aggrandize himself financially—there is no need for that. But he has used the public treasury for the greater Bloomberg glory. Starting with his first re-election run in 2005 and continuing through his current bid for a third term, Mr. Bloomberg has been in continuous campaign mode, adding to the city government's largess so much that New York had to increase its debt even when Wall Street was still pouring money into the city's coffers. And of course, thanks to the financial crisis, Wall Street's bounty can no longer be counted on. Spending has grown almost 50% on Mr. Bloomberg's watch, while New York's annual pension obligation, based in part on the salary increases that Mr. Bloomberg negotiated, jumped to $6.3 billion from $1.4 billion a year. The mayor's supposed pragmatism has produced the standard-issue outcome: New York is once again in fiscal peril.

Ms. Purnick seriously underplays this aspect of Mr. Bloomberg's tenure and one other: In 2001, Mr. Bloomberg began his first campaign for mayor by pledging "to do for education what [Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani did for public safety." His own mayoralty, he said, should be judged by what he accomplished in New York's schools. So what is the verdict? In "Mike Bloomberg," Ms. Purnick keeps education off-stage until the last minute. She concludes that "improvement in the schools is indisputable." But improvement in the students is another matter: Mr. Bloomberg spent an additional $8.5 billion on education, but the scores or city students on the SAT and NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress)—the two national tests not susceptible to local manipulation—remain flat.

If Michael Bloomberg is to achieve the greatness that Ms. Purnick is eager to confer on him already, he will have to do so in his third term, assuming that he is re-elected. The schools will always matter, of course, but the mayor might want to start by extricating the city from the fiscal hole he has dug for it. The "problem solver" created the problem; now he can solve it.

Mr. Siegel is a visiting professor at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Mike Bloomberg book review, the review sounds like me!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574403792814138408.html

Mike Bloomberg pushed a tsunami of community crushing development -- way too fast and reckless....

Read the article....the author is dazzled by Mike (so what is new -- his money seems to hypnotizes people) but the reviewer....not a fan.

From the last paragraph...
"....the mayor might want to start by extricating the city from the fiscal hole he has dug for it." Fred Siegel author of the article....

Hey Fred, Mike bought a third term so that is his punishment and as far as I am concerned it is not good enough.


I posted this comment:
Someone
told me to read this piece because the author's reference to a "tsunami
of expenditures" sounded like my words. I have been saying for years
Bloomberg pushed a tsunami of community crushing development. My first
YouTube, "Mayor Bloomberg King of New York was last year in response to
the fiasco with term limits. I also painted a portrait of Mike with a
small grin and an oversized crown with red, white and blue gems and
transformed the portrait in to a political poster asking "Is democracy
for sale? No Third Term". Bloomberg is going to win and his punishment
for denying us a referendum is the third term. I am glad Fred Siegel is
not dazzled by Bloomberg and his wealth. On my poster above Mike
Bloomberg's shoulders, it says "Principum Amicitias!". I borrowed these
words from the newly discovered Shakespeare portrait. Many New York
voters may not know the translation but they share the feeling. Mike
will win but I predict with the lowest amount of votes and put that in
context of the record amount of money he spent. Thanks for publishing
this book review. Siegel paints an accurate portrait.

MONSERRATE VIDEO "UNCUT"

State Senator Hiram Monserrate is now on trial for having slashed his girlfriend, Karla Giraldo. Video of the incident was released this week. You, dear reader, are the judge. YFP is soliciting guilty or innocent verdicts. We will publish the result after seven days. Please go go the comments section to place your verdict.

Hiram Monserrate's legal Houdini Joseph Tacopina waves magic wand at testimony

Friday, September 25th 2009, 4:00 AM

Hiram Monserrate with lawyer Joseph Tacopina outside of court on Thursday.
Marino for News
Hiram Monserrate with lawyer Joseph Tacopina outside of court on Thursday.

Do you believe State Sen. Hiram Monseratte's claim that the slashing of his girlfriend was an accident?

When we first heard about Queens Sen. Hiram Monserrate's girlfriend's face getting all cut up last December, we flashed back to a 1997 incident involving Whitney Houston.

Houston and Bobby Brown were on a 120-foot yacht, and she ended up in an emergency room off the island of Capri with a 2-inch gash in her beautiful face.

The singer said she'd cut herself on a rock while swimming. Oops! A crew member told cops she got cut onboard.

Whitney suddenly remembered that, and said, "I feel like a klutz."

Her spokeswoman explained, "They were having lunch, and she slipped in the dining room. She thinks she cut herself on a dinner plate that broke when she was trying to break her fall." Picture that.

Dinnerware - in this case a glass - also was involved in the injury of Monserrate's gal pal, Karla Giraldo. Her cuts were so extensive they required 40 stitches, not four, like Whitney's.

It, too, was an accident, not a jealous rage over finding another man's phone number in her purse, Monserrate claims.

He was bringing a glass of water to his love and he tripped and it went into her face, slashing her.

Giraldo, shown Wednesday on a videotape in Queens Criminal Court screaming as Monserrate dragged her through a hallway, says that's what happened - an accident.

She didn't always say that.

Thursday, in Judge William Erlbaum's courtroom, the emergency room nurse who first treated Giraldo at Long Island Jewish Hospital testified that no sooner had she told Monserrate he couldn't enter the triage room and shut the door than Giraldo cried, "He's crazy! He's crazy!"

"She was very upset," nurse Susan Cabibbo said. Earlier, emergency room doctor Dawne Kort testified, "[Giraldo] said, 'I can't believe he did this to me.'"

It all seemed so clear-cut, pardon the expression.

That is, until Joseph Tacopina got up, on behalf of his hulking client. Tacopina's the kind of lawyer who makes you want to get into trouble so he can defend you.

With his custom-made suits, expensive haircuts and very expensive watches, the soft-spoken Brooklynite has been the go-to guy for everyone from Foxy Brown to former Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik.

He got Sticky Fingaz cleared of gun charges, and got Lillo Brancato off on a murder rap in a cop killing, convincing jurors the actor was guilty only of burglary.

A legal magician, he represented a descendant of Harry Houdini in his effort to exhume his ancestor's body.

Thursday's testimony was strong, but Tacopina sliced and diced it as if he had his own broken water glass.

"Here she is, bleeding, crying," he said to Cabibbo, "and you shut the door and she says, 'He's crazy, he's crazy!' and you don't ask, 'Who?'... Hospital rules require that if it's a domestic violence case, you have to tell the patient of her victim's rights, but you didn't do that, did you?

"Only 18 days later, after this story had been on TV and the newspapers, did you remember this quote and write it down."

Monserrate may not have been so smart in Albany this year, but he was brilliant in hiring Tacopina. Monserrate is as knotted up in evidence and negative testimony as could be, but like a legal Houdini, Tacopina may just be able to get him out of it.

jmolloy@nydailynews.com


Obama's visit seen by some Democrats as undermining governor

New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo got a much warmer greeting from President Obama on Monday than was given to Gov. David A. Paterson, in the background.
Associated Press

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson's ability to govern at a crucial fiscal moment for the state has been severely compromised after President Obama undermined Paterson's political future over the past few days, some Democrats said Tuesday.

"He may have been put in a position where he cannot govern. That's premature and hurtful to all New Yorkers and is a situation that may backfire on those that wanted to ease the way out for the governor," said Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada.

The first major public test for the governor comes today, when he will join with legislative leaders in an effort to solve what is expected to be a deficit higher than recently projected at $2.1 billion. Officials in both parties will watch to see how cooperative Democratic legislators will be for a governor who some believe is being thrust into the lame duck category -- with 15 months left to serve -- by Obama's efforts to get him off the ticket in 2010.

The intrigue only deepened Tuesday when the state's highest court, in a surprising decision that reversed two lower court rulings, said Paterson had the authority when he appointed Richard Ravitch as lieutenant governor in July.

With Ravitch now legally in office and first in the line of succession, Democrats say the way could be paved for Paterson to gracefully leave office, possibly with a federal post in the Obama administration, before his term ends as a bow to the White House's concerns.

But Ravitch said Tuesday that Paterson has given him no indication that he will be stepping down. "Quite to the contrary, I have the distinct impression that he meant what he said, that his present intention is to run for election," the Manhattan lawyer said. He said Paterson is "obviously" going to serve out his term.

While some Democrats privately are rejoicing that Paterson -- who they believe risks hurting other Democrats on the ballot if he runs next year -- was slapped down by the White House, others call the past few days of leaks and public put-downs unseemly even by New York political standards.

Assemblyman Mark Schroeder, D-Buffalo, said he will not be supporting Paterson in 2010 because of his job performance and low ratings among the public.

"But I don't think anyone who has dedicated their life to public service deserves to have this orchestrated out in the media," Schroeder said of the leaks that surfaced over the weekend and culminated in an embarrassing appearance for Paterson with Obama on Monday in Troy.

"To make the governor feel uncomfortable in his own state, it's regrettable," said Schroeder, who called himself a supporter of Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo.

"So he's been unable to lead. What has he really done wrong? Why does he deserve that ridicule? I believe the president and his people could have handled it differently .‚.‚. I don't think he should have flaunted making the governor feel bad and making Andrew [Cuomo] feel good."

Ravitch added, "I must say, having been a strong Obama supporter going back to 2007, I was a little mystified by what happened the last two days. But in politics, today's news is tomorrow's fish wrapper."

Paterson said he understands Obama's concerns about wanting to keep elected Democrats in office next year. The governor sought to downplay the Monday episode, saying Obama had been "gracious" to him. "He asked me how I was feeling. He expressed a little chagrin about the process in this situation," Paterson told reporters in New York.

The governor declined to discuss conversations he had last week with Patrick Gaspard, the Obama political director who brought the message to the governor last week that the president had lost confidence in his ability to win in 2010. Yet a defiant Paterson, who repeated he will run in 2010, suggested the brouhaha is not helping the state.

"I am concerned about the Democratic Party. But I'm also concerned about my ability to govern," he said.

He then added his own apparent shot, noting that the Obama White House has not "exactly been able to govern in the first year of their administration the way other administrations have." He then noted Obama's trouble in getting health care reform passed.

"They can't get one Republican vote?" Paterson said of the stalled legislation along partisan lines.

The governor has had few true allies in the Legislature for a good portion of this year as he has wrestled with ideas to keep the budget in balance at a time of historic fiscal problems. When lawmakers were not ignoring his chief priorities -- such as caps on property taxes and state spending -- they turned back many of his ideas for cutting state spending.

Now, Paterson is again asking legislators for help to resolve what he said is one of the worst middle-of-the-fiscal-year deficits. because, he believes, there are so few options for resolving the deficit. Paterson already has ruled out tax hikes, leaving spending cuts that will be unpopular with powerful special interests.

And Paterson must wrestle with these problems this at a time when the nation's top Democrat has helped spread the word that Paterson is apparently not up for the job, some Democrats complained.

Will lawmakers, many of whom believe Paterson is unelectable in 2010, work hard to help him out of the new fiscal mess? Publicly, legislative leaders have insisted the focus now is on the budget, not the drama created by the White House. The answer will come in the weeks ahead if the Legislature returns to fix the deficit.

With the White House plan for Paterson made public, the stage is now set for a governor, who already has dire poll ratings among voters, to be further undercut by legislators, who have their own political priorities to consider. Senate Democrats, for instance, are worried Republicans can use the state's problems to retake control of the Senate in 2010.

"I could make an argument that you have as much power when you're at 20 percent in the polls as you do when you're at 80 percent in the polls," Ravitch said of Paterson's dismal standing among voters. "He is still the governor of the State of New York. He has a mammoth responsibility, which I think he takes very, very seriously."

Tuesday's ruling by the Court of Appeals in the Ravitch case set off a new round of maneuverings. Paterson sought to portray it as a victory because it gives him a lieutenant experienced in the ways of Albany during an ongoing fiscal crisis.

The 4-3 ruling ends what would have been another bitter power battle in the Senate -- whose leader is next in line if there is no lieutenant governor -- were Paterson to leave before his term ends.

That the court's ruling came the day after Obama's visit only added to the swirl that has taken over Albany.

"We've heard for a couple months that the game plan was Ravitch would be lieutenant governor to give David the ability to have an exit plan and be appointed to something," said a top Democrat in Albany who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This decision now gives him the ability to craft a much more desirable exit plan than before." Another Democrat added: "It's one thing for a president to say to the governor, "Don't run.' It's something else for him to say to the governor, "You can leave New York right now because I've got something for you in Washington and don't worry the state is in good hands with Richard Ravitch.'‚"

Ravitch already has said he would not run for office in 2010.

"I think it's 50-50," Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic Party consultant, said when asked if the ruling makes it more likely Paterson will resign.

But Sheinkopf said he believes Paterson, if he went that route, would not walk away from the job until after the state budget is put together next spring -- at the earliest. "David Paterson has been a contrarian all his career. .‚.‚. He does what he wants. No question it makes it easier for him to leave. Will he take that option? It's not in his nature," Sheinkopf said.

Espada, the Bronx Democratic majority leader of the Senate, said there is "no question" that the political unrest this week has made the governor's job more difficult and has caused a sideshow that will hurt the ability of the sides to resolve the new budget problems.

"But I still represent a county with the highest unemployment rate and I know the upstate economy is reeling. While it's nice to focus on the 2010 elections, we have the realities of this year and next year," he added.

Still, the incursion of the Obama White House into the internal Democratic affairs of New York did not lose its legs Tuesday.

Former President Bill Clinton checked in on the Paterson and Obama controversy in an interview on the "Today" show, where he said Paterson is "not in good shape now." "But I will say this about David Paterson: He is a good man. He has achieved a lot in his life," Clinton said of Paterson, who was an early supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton for president in 2008.

He added, "I believe if he believes he has a reasonable chance to win I think he'll probably run. If he thinks his chances are one in 10 or worse, I think he probably won't, but I think he'll decide and he'll make a good decision."

Political spinning and some mild retreating were also afoot Tuesday. U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, a Queens Democrat, sought to reel in a Sunday New York Times report that he delivered a "do not run" message from the White House to Paterson in a dinner last weekend. He appeared in several downstate media markets to say no such message was sent, but that he was merely talking to an old friend -- Paterson -- about his election troubles and concerns in the White House about 2010.

The Court of Appeals ruling, given succession issues, was seen as the one easy way for Paterson to leave office early with a soft landing or criticism that he was leaving the state in chaos without a lieutenant governor in place.

"While there can be no quarrel with the proposition that, generally, election must be the preferred means of filling vacancies in elective office, it does not follow that the elective principle is pre-eminent when it comes to filling a vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor," Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman wrote in the majority opinion.

But the three dissenters sharply disputed the legal ability of Paterson, who was not elected to his job as governor, to name a successor. In writing for the minority opinion, Judge Eugene Pigott, seemed to predict the possibility that Paterson could resign and Ravitch become governor.

"Under the majority's rationale, the possibility exists that the citizens of this state will one day find themselves governed by a person who has never been subjected to scrutiny by the electorate, and who could in turn appoint his or her own unelected lieutenant governor," Pigott wrote this morning.

"Because this is contrary to the text of the New York Constitution and affords governors unprecedented power to appoint a successor, we respectfully dissent," the judge wrote.

Assemblyman Robin Schimminger, D-Kenmore, who for years has had a bill for voters to elect a lieutenant governor in the event of a vacancy as New York saw last year with the resignation of Eliot Spitzer and ascendency of Paterson to the job, called the court's ruling a "Herculean legal leap."

Schimminger said the ruling more than ever creates the need for a new law for a "rational and balanced framework" for such vacancies to be filled in the future.

tprecious@buffnews.com

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Wayne Barrett on Bill Thompson’s TV Ad, Bloomberg’s Snippy Response


Thompson’s Spanish-language ad.

Via The Village Voice:

Almost as soon as Bill Thompson’s first television commercial appeared last week, Bloomberg campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson issued a statement pointing out that the ad was shot in the office of a lobbyist. Wiseguy Wolfson added tersely that Thompson’s decision to shoot it there “tells you all you need to know.”

The veteran campaign communicator was right — Thompson did shoot parts of the commercial in the offices of the MirRam Group, the lobbying firm run by Luis Miranda and Roberto Ramirez that also functions as a political consulting outfit. Wolfson tells the Voice that he didn’t realize when he fired that shot that Ramirez’s ex-wife, Rose Rodriguez, is a $10,000-a-month employee of the Bloomberg campaign.

Sources who know Ramirez well say that he routinely helps his ex-wife, who is also the mother of their child, get jobs. Her only other employers this decade were Hillary Clinton and the New York State Department of Labor, and Ramirez, the former head of the Bronx Democratic party and a wheeler-dealer par excellence, reportedly helped get both, according to these sources. Rodriguez went straight from the $101,000-a-year labor department job to the Bloomberg payroll in April. Clinton paid her $84,000- a-year to head her constituent services office when she was a U.S. Senator.

Asked if Ramirez helped Rodriguez get her job with the campaign, Bloomberg spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker called Rodriguez “a political professional with an accomplished resume” (actually her only known prior campaign job was in Mario Cuomo’s unsuccessful re-election campaign in 1994). Hazelbaker, who declined to answer questions about Rodriguez’s prior campaigns, said that the “suggestion that she was hired for any other reason than she’s good at what she does is blatantly sexist.” The spokeswoman for the McCain campaign in 2008, Hazelbaker used to make the same argument for Sarah Palin, calling it “pretty audacious” for the Obama camp “to say that Governor Palin is not qualified to be vice president.”

The irony is that Bill Thompson’s campaign manager, Eddie Castell, told the Voice that he was aware that Ramirez’s ex-wife worked for Bloomberg; but Wolfson, who was Clinton’s top political operative for years, says he had nothing to do with the hiring of this supposed “political professional” who worked for Clinton for seven years, and didn’t even know she was related to Ramirez. He can’t be sure he even met her when she was with Clinton. Thompson’s filings indicate that MirRam began working as a consultant to the campaign in June, a couple of months after Rodriguez started working for Bloomberg.

When Wolfson brought the shooting of the commercial up in his head-to-head debate with Castell on NY1 last week, Castell said they were paying a $1,500 location fee to MirRam for allowing them to use their office. The Observer’s Azi Paybarah reported that the commercial was shot at MirRam back in July, but the $1,500 fee does not appear in the filing. MirRam is paid $8,000 a month by Thompson.

In 2005, the Bloomberg campaign frequently tried to depict Democratic nominee Fernando Ferrer as a willing tool of lobbyist Ramirez, who played a much larger role in that campaign than he is now in the Thompson campaign. A target of the mayor’s in 2005, Ramirez appears to have friends on both sides in 2009.

[Thanks to Queens Crap for the link]